Saturday, November 2, 2024
Yeah, this is becoming a habit, isn’t it? Seems that I have spent more time over the last two weeks typing blogs than I have for most of the Summer. I’m certainly not complaining though, because it feels really good to be back out there again with any sort of regularity. When it comes to creativity, I’m in a circular pattern where I have a moment of creativity that leads to a successful trek, which then fuels that creativity even more. Of course, then I go out again for more photos, which feeds into that creativity once again. After so long of being rather apathetic towards photography, it is a wonderful experience to be able to go out this many times and come back with photos that I really like.
At the risk of getting ahead of myself, this morning, I was looking through my collection of potential images for the 2024 most significant photos post that I will be doing towards the end of the year. As I was going through the list of photos that have been gradually compiled, I was left a little underwhelmed at what I was seeing. They just didn’t seem nearly as significant now as they did then. They were strong photos, but they just seemed kind of blah to me. Then it hit me, this long creative slump that I have been going through has really had an impact on me and my photography. I said not too long ago in one of my Behind the Camera entries that the longer the slump, the more improvement that will be made on the back end. I think that is ringing true right now because the standard of photography that I am striving for is higher than what I have previously been satisfied with. What was once a standout photo in my collection is now an average shot and one that I know I can improve on. I’m not saying that everything that I have been shooting over the past couple of weeks is miles better than what I have shot before, but I think that they are more considered and have more to offer visually, even if that more means less to see. I feel that this last little bit of the year might represent a huge jump for me as a photographer and I would be stupid to question that.
I’ve alluded to what brought me here in the previous blog where I went out to Hanging Rock and made a couple of stops before and after the park. While on the way back home, I passed by a location that I hadn’t paid attention to in a long time. There was an orange car from the mid ’30’s that was sitting in the back yard which I had seen on the way to the park, but didn’t want to take the time to get permission and work the car. I needed to let the setting marinate in my head before I started to work the scene. By the time I was heading back home, it was too dark to bother with. After going through the day’s images though, I started to look at the map and realized that I had been out here before several years ago. If memory serves, it was before Toni and I moved out to Purlear, so that would make it more than four years ago. I didn’t recall what I had shot while I was there, but it seemed familiar, and I still had the owner’s name in my phone attached to the location.
What I was looking for was a partly cloudy sky day because there were some leaves on the trees that I wanted to get some illumination, but I needed the ability to have variable intensity with the direct sunlight. There was also the possibility that I would be including the sky in the compositions which always looks better with a few puffs of clouds. Friday offered some really thick clouds that would have made lighting the subjects very easy, but I felt that the backgrounds would suffer under the flat light. I was also quite tired and needed some down time to recharge. I ended up sitting in the living room and watching several movies with Toni which was a great way to spend the day. By the time I was headed to bed, my mind was thinking about the possibility of going back out to Surry County and seeing about photographing the old car.
The weather forecast was calling for thick clouds through most of the morning with partly cloudy skies taking place in the afternoon, eventually clearing off. I wanted to get out there between 11am and 2pm which was when the clouds would be at the optimal, even though the sunlight would be coming from high up in the sky. This is why I love this time of year since the sun stays so far to the South that even at noon, it is still quite a bit lower in the sky than it would be in the summer at mid-morning. The only thing that I had to really worry about was the quality of light, and hopefully with the passing clouds I could manage some really good lighting on the car.
Once I got my morning activities taken care of, I went upstairs and checked out the sky to find that the clouds had pretty much started to break up already. It was rather sunny for the most part and that gave me some doubt as to whether or not this was going to work out. The deciding factor was I was itching to get back out with the camera and felt that even if the lighting wasn’t right for the car, I would be able to find something out that way to shoot. I wasn’t looking for a major session by any stretch, just a couple of keepers, something to feed that creativity. I really wanted to be able to shoot, edit, process, and blog about it all before going to bed tonight. The day was starting early enough that I really shouldn’t have much problem making that happen.
The further I got away from Wilkes County, the clearer the sky was looking. There were still some puffy clouds that I have always called “Simpsons Clouds” because they look like the sky in the opening bit for The Simpsons television show. They would be enough to provide interest, but probably wouldn’t do much to curtail the sunlight unfortunately. During the trip, I kept my eyes out for any targets of opportunity, but didn’t really find anything that I wanted to shoot. For some reason, this orange car had just burrowed deep inside of my brain, and I had to get a photo of it.
When I arrived, I made my normal pass just to make sure that nothing had changed, and the lighting was still looking good on the car. Despite the sun coming down pretty strong, the light on the car looked good, but more importantly, the leaves behind the car were looking good as well. The time of year was important for this photo because with the orange car, I needed it to make sense with the surroundings. With orange, yellow, and red tones in the trees, the car just fit like a glove sitting right there. It was perfect.
Once I got turned around, I pulled into the driveway and noticed that there were two kids playing in the front yard. That meant that somebody was home which was a good sign. I got out of the truck and confirmed that their folks were inside. I knocked on the door and a lady answered from the side of the house. I immediately recognized her from several years ago and reintroduced myself. She directed me to a gentleman that was walking back up to the house and I started to talk to him. Since I had talked to the property owner by phone the last time, I wasn’t sure if this was the same guy or not, but he was happy to let me shoot some photos. he even told me about several more vehicles on the property. We had a nice chat, and I got the truck parked out of the way before grabbing my gear.
I already knew the first composition that I wanted to shoot, and it was the overall car at the angle that I had seen from the road. I chose my standard zoom for this shot because I wanted to include a good bit of the background to take advantage of the trees. As always, I added a polarizer and got the tripod set up roughly in the place that I figured the composition would work from. While I was getting things situated the actual property owner came by after being notified by some neighbors. All of us ended up chatting and found out that we knew some of the same folks. The owner took some time and showed me one of his prize possessions which was a fully restored car that was beautiful. Now that I had his blessing as well, I went full tilt on getting some photos while the light was still decent.
I was on the right track with the first composition, but I ended up moving in closer than I had been to start with. This allowed for a slightly wider-angle that fit the scene better. I also timed it with the light as the clouds partially covered the sun rather than fully which is what I done initially. The full force of the sun was too much, but with a 1/3 of the intensity cut, the scene looked perfect with the right shadows and the right colors for what I had envisioned. It was a simple overall shot and one that I thought was pretty strong, especially for the first one in the bag.
I wasn’t ready to stop there, even though that was pretty much the only composition that I had in mind for the day. From this point on, I was winging it, or more accurately, letting my instincts drive me. As I have mentioned before, this is how I much prefer to work. There is no real thought to things like settings, and even composition to a point. I just see something that resonates with me, and I point the camera until I feel the same way about it.
That had to be the case when I went to the shaded side of the car which isn’t something that I would normally do with the sunlight falling so hard. What struck me about this side was right up front where there was a bit of vibrant vegetation growing up over the fender. The greens contrasted so nicely with the color of the car while the headlight was right there in the middle of it all for a visual anchor. I played around with the angle of the camera until I had a composition that made me react the same way that I had while seeing it. I shot the photo while the sun was behind a cloud thinking that I wanted some even light, but that didn’t quite seem to work. I waited again for the sun to be free of the cloud which introduced some shadows. These shadows added to the visual interest and made the photo what I was wanting. There wasn’t much actual thought that went into this, it was just pure reaction on my part based on how the images made me feel. I wasn’t looking at any of these from a technical point of view where I was worried about things like depth of field and exposure. I kind of just let those take care of themselves.
What I mean by that is I would look at the scene, determine what was important and what needed to be in focus and what could go soft. I would then pick an aperture that I felt would give me that result and that was where I left it. I would make a quick check in the image review to make sure I hadn’t missed anything too terribly, but for the most part, I just set it and forgot it. If the wind was causing me an issue, I would bump the ISO to get the shutter where I needed it, but that was about as much thought as I gave any of the photos when it came to exposure settings. I don’t necessarily recommend going about it this way unless you have a very solid understanding of how these things work. If you are still learning, you need to think through it much more than I have here, but once you have a strong foundation in how to set the exposure, you can pretty easily do this.
My next stop on the tour of this ’36 Dodge was the other side, but I didn’t want to get a similar composition because there was no greenery there to add to the visual interest. Also, the light was much flatter with the sun shining on it fairly directly. I looked around to see what I could do with it and found that I liked the shapes that were created by the fender and the headlight. This was also another opportunity to get the hood ornament from a different angle. I set things up from the rear of the fender looking at the trees in the background for just a bit of fall color to match with the color of the car. The soft curves with the high contrast vents gave the eyes plenty of things to look at throughout the photo. It wasn’t until after I had shot the photo and got home that I realized just how soft the leading surface of the hood was in comparison to the headlight and hood ornament. I did set a wider aperture, but didn’t bother to review it at the time. I just felt that it looked right when I gave a quick glance on the back of the camera. When I saw it on the full-sized monitor and saw just how narrow the depth of field was, I was elated. This was exactly what I was aiming for, but hadn’t really put any effort into confirming, or stressing over the aperture. It just came together for me.
There wasn’t much thought that was put into my next composition either which turned into a variation on an earlier one that I had shot from the shaded driver’s side of the grill. This time, I wanted to get much more of the front of the car to include both headlights and a good portion of the trees as well as the sky above. The main concept here wasn’t just the greenery on the fender, it was the combination of the colors with reds, blues, greens, oranges, and yellows. It was this composition that captured the season much more than the more intimate capture did.
The composition was one that was a bit different from what I would normally shoot where I would want to include the entire front end with the long grill. It was a matter of not thinking too much with the process and just framing up what I had seen in a way that made me feel the same way as when I saw it with my eyes. This meant a horizontal crop because I wanted the headlights and hood ornament to be a foreground that helped to introduce the windshield and the tree that was framed by the vehicle. The bit of blue sky was there to offer some color balance to the overly warm scene that I felt was very important. It is dangerous working with a color that has this much red in it. It is too easy to overindulge in that color which makes the photo kind of hard to look at for any length of time. If you will recall, my main goal with my images is to ask questions of the viewer and make them look at the photo for a long time to get as many clues as they can. All of that would be for nought, if the colors made it hard to continually look into. It was that bit of blue in the sky as well as the shaded portion of the hood that brought some calmness to an overall dramatic scene in terms of colors.
By this point, I was feeling like I had ADHD or something because I went back to the other side of the car where the light was a bit more even. I was looking for an isolation where the vents for the hood were a major feature. I looked over the hood and found that there was a section where the handle was angled up slightly, pointing to the vents. This was the point of interest that I was wanting to base the photo on. I looked at the angles and found one that seemed to work well. It was pretty much straight onto the side of the hood using the chrome trim to provide the horizontal reference point. I needed that bit of trim in the photo because it was going to offer a bit of contrast, not only in tone, but also in color. I knew that I was going to get a reflection of the sky in the chrome which would help to balance out the red tones in the car. I could also go black and white with it and just concentrate on the luminosity contrasts if I needed to.
One thing which wasn’t working out in my favor was the lens choice. I didn’t like how the standard zoom was looking and felt that I needed a bit longer of a focal length. I took this opportunity to swap out lenses to my telephoto which has become my favorite lens for most types of photography. I know it works great for this kind of composition, and I knew that I was going to find plenty of others to where it would work as well. Once I had the lens swapped, I reframed the image from a bit further away. This was looking much better. The first two exposures were looking just like I wanted them to, but I realized that there wasn’t enough separation between the vents and the handle. I elevated the camera so that the handle was right at the bottom edge of the dark portion of the hood. This made the elements much better organized and made for a better composition.
If you have been keeping track, you will see that I have five keepers so far, and just of the one red Dodge. If it feels like they have happened at a breakneck pace, you are right. I had only shot 22 frames by this point. You can tell that I wasn’t spending much time on any single composition. It really was a matter of find it, set it up, shoot it, and move on. I didn’t see much need in making small adjustments here and there as I was being very selective about what I pressed the button on, and since I was going on feeling and instinct, there was not space in the equation for second guessing choices. I had the right image when I looked at the image review and felt that it captured the moment.
Not wanting to get too bogged down in the moment with this one car, I wanted to go around to the back of the barn and see what was there. This is usually where I find some of the best examples, but that wasn’t really the case this time. There were three more Dodges back there, a red flat nosed pickup whose bed was sitting on the other side of the barn, a Duster (I think it was), and a Belvedere. These three cars were all parked under the awning of the barn, pretty much touching each other. This was going to make for a very hard setting to get photos from. It seemed that the easiest one was going to be the truck since it was parked on the edge with the front pointed out of the shelter.
I still had the long lens attached and thought that was going to be the right one to use as it would allow me to control the amount of background that was included in the frame and would be easier to get a shallow depth of field with. No matter how I framed up the photo, whether horizontal, vertical, or even square, I just couldn’t get a composition that I liked. The closest that I came was one where I had to include a 5-gallon water jug at the door that would then force me to include a section of the grass that was fully in the sunlight. All of that just made the composition too cluttered and was nothing like what I had felt when I looked at the truck.
This was where instinct came into play, and I started to make the frame smaller and smaller as I eliminated different elements. I could tell that I was onto something at this point because I was starting to react to the photo the same way that I had reacted to the truck in the first place. I recalled what drew me here originally was the fact that all the greenery was growing out of the engine bay. That was what I focused my attention on, and just used the truck to frame that element. Once again, I had to be careful with how much of the red tones that I included because I didn’t want this photo to be one that would imply danger or an emergency. Quite the contrary, I wanted it to have a calming effect which is very hard to do with this color. by including just enough to establish shape and context, I was able to focus more on the greens while the background was a very soft yellow tone.
This color palette was enhanced by the color profile that I picked during the processing. It was one that muted the reds just right, while protecting the greens and yellows. I built upon that start through my processing until I had what you see here. Not only do I like the way that the colors are rendered, but I also think that the composition is quite successful. There is enough included in the frame to tell you what you need to know, but not enough to answer all of the questions that you might have which is just the way that I like to create an image.
I spent a little more time with the pickup before moving over to the other cars. The one in the middle was arguably the most interesting of the three, but it was also sandwiched between the truck and a white divider that was slid in-between it and the Belvedere. I just wasn’t able to get the shot that I would have wanted with this car, so I moved on to the Belvedere which was actually in pretty good shape. It was a nice blue color that was mostly without patina. There was no hood, and the front of the car was covered with plywood which made an overall shot of it near impossible. The first thing to really hit me about this car was the fender emblem that identified the car. I’m a sucker for a nameplate it would seem, and I started to look for a composition here.
There were a lot of weeds growing up around the side of the car which would blow into the frame no matter how I angled it. I ended up finding the best angle for the emblem which included the bit of trim just above it for a bit of contrast and diagonal movement. I then framed the left side with the door seam. The weeds that were entering into the frame were moved out of the way and tucked under the car, or behind other vegetation long enough to get them out of the way. I then fired off a couple of shots with slightly different framings.
I had thought that this was going to be a black and white photo when I shot it, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to see it in full color. That blue was just too pretty to pass up on, and the condition of the paint was part of the story. The final element that cemented the need for color was the fact that with one of my color profiles, the stainless trim as well as the bright parts of the badge turned this warm hue that complimented the blue quite well. It is the little details like this which really got me thinking that my bar has been raised when it comes to my photographs after my creative hiatus. While I would think about things like this before, it was kind of like an afterthought. This time, I went into the processing looking for that complimentary color palette. Between the compositional choices and the color choices, the end result is so much more engaging than a simple photo of a fender badge should really be. Those choices elevated the concept to something much more impressive which just happened instinctually while before it was very much a series of conscious choices. I really love the fact that they are happening automatically now!
Feeling pretty good about the Belvedere, I started looking for other possibilities for compositions. I knew that it was going to have to be something detail oriented because I just couldn’t get the whole car. The area around the passenger side mirror interested me because of the lines and the textures that the dirt created on the door. I started to look at this as a composition and found that the glass was missing from the mirror. This is usually an element that I can use for some added lines or interest, but there were no reflections here, just a void. I wasn’t turned off by the scene though and still worked to fit things together.
What I ended up with was a photo that focused on the mirror without a reflection and the vent window with the body line as a diagonal. The shapes were a bit portion of the composition, but it was the textures that really brought it together. I knew that there was no way that this was going to be in color because the dirt muted out the blue too much, and the chrome didn’t have much color to it. There was actually very little color at all here, and since my main motivation for the shot was the lines, shapes, and textures, I knew that black and white was the way to go. I even set the camera to such just so I could see how things were looking.
I took one more look around the Belvedere to see if there was anything else that I missed, but nothing was jumping out at me. Actually, nothing was exciting my senses like the other two compositions had done. That pretty much told me that I was done with this car. The one in the middle was still exciting to me, and I was feeling that there was a photo to be had for sure. The patina of the car was great, but the colors were not all that grand. I liked the lines of it, and the wheels were slightly different from what would be expected on this car. I really liked the dirt that had settled on it as well which added to the textures. The problem that I had with it was that I wasn’t able to get a view of the front. In addition, there wasn’t a good and clear view of the rear either. Even if there was, there was no bumper which made things look a little off balance back there. I was only able to work with the side, but a side shot was not a pleasing one without including the front at a very minimum. My gut was telling me that there was something here on the side of the car though, so I stuck with it for a few more minutes.
Before I knew it, I was standing at the rear quarter of the car using the telephoto lens which seemed crazy in the tight quarters. I had the tripod fully extended and pointing down to the front wheel. The frame was filled with the car and the divider became a background of sorts with the top edge just out of frame. I used a tall weed to frame the image to the right and keep the eyes from dwelling on the white board. The left side of the frame was filled with the rear window and a dark section of the roof which effectively closed the image in from the right side. What was left was the swooping lines of the body with the rear pillar, door handle, and aluminum wheel creating three points of interest framing the windows which established the body line.
To my knowledge, this was the first time that I have thought to do a composition quite like this, but it actually worked very well for this car in this particular situation. It is one that I will have to keep in mind for situations just like this. It gave me the one and only photo from the most interesting vehicle in that barn. Of course, with the absence of any real defined color in the frame, black and white worked great to focus the attention on the main elements that I wanted to capture. Color would have just confused the issue and for no good reason since it was all going to be a beige base color throughout the frame. Also, I am still very much aware that this was the year that I wanted to spend more time and effort with my black and white photos. It is hard to shoot without color this time of year because the colors around the landscape are so interesting with the changing leaves. That makes it hard to think about black and white, but here in the barn, I really didn’t have to worry about seasonal colors at all, and it was all about the subjects that I was shooting.
With the one frame of the middle car, I was fairly sure that I was done. I made one more quick pass through the cars to see if anything else grabbed my attention. I was pretty much unaffected by them this time and felt that was a good indication that I was done with these. The clouds had pretty much cleared out of the sky at this point which made me want to give the car out front another look. I had only shot an additional 12 frames in the barn and come away with another four keepers if you are keeping track. Things really were moving quite fast. When I got back out to the car in the front of the barn, I shot a series of six frames of the whole car from the back right quarter. I had a hard time getting the perspective on the large trunk right and kept seeing it as too big. Nothing that I shot really excited me, and eventually I realized that I was just shooting it because the light was good, and I felt that there was a photo there. It wasn’t something that really connected with me on the same level as the other photos the car had. That was confirmed when I got home and looked at the photos on the computer. One of them made it through the culling process, but ultimately was never edited because the shot from the front quarter resonated with me much better.
I moved in closer and shot another five frames which were similar to the one I had done earlier with the top of the fender, the side of the hood, and the headlight. This time, I had a wider focal length as I had moved back to my standard zoom once again. I was trying to get the car to frame a yellow tree in the distance, but it was never really successful because the tree wasn’t quite as dominant in the scene as it needed to be. After five attempts at this composition, I abandoned it thinking that there might be one that would work, but not having much hope for it.
As a last attempt for a photo of this car, I moved in closer to look at the rear of the car which I hadn’t really spent much time with. It was the empty taillight that caught my eye and heart. I could see how the body lines were all coming together beside the light housing and there was a shadow from that housing that stretched across the different panels. This was something that affected me, and I wanted to frame up a photo that would capture what I was feeling. Since the entire scene was that reddish tone, I felt pretty sure that I was going to be doing this one in black and white. I shot a total of three frames with slightly different compositions and a slight change in the exposure before wrapping that scene up. After a quick walk-around of the car, I was sure I was finished with it.
There was a GMC pickup parked on the other side of a small building that I kind of liked. It had just enough patina to make it interesting and it had double headlights which was not something you often saw on pickups of the era. The sun was brutal though and I could hear that the family was getting ready to head out for an activity. Not wanting to hold them up, in case they were waiting on me, I made a quick look around the truck and found one area that spoke to me which I thought would make a good photo. It seems that every time I run across one of these trucks with the “Custom” badge on the door, I have to find a way to shoot it. With this truck, it was the passenger side that grabbed my attention. I liked how the shadows were falling from the door handle and how the sun was lighting the curves of the body.
I started to play with the position of the camera until I had something elevated from the rear of the truck. This pushed everything into a natural diagonal that worked with the shadows. The bit of window that I was able to include turned into a triangle with a bit of moss growing for that added bit of texture for interest. There was another triangle which was the cab corner behind the door as well as one beneath the side molding. The more I finessed the composition, the more I was responding to it emotionally, and the more that I realized that this photo was all about lines and shapes along with the subtle shading from the shadows. I knew that this one would be black and white without a doubt. When I started to process it, I didn’t even consider color because I could already tell that the color was confusing the composition and distracting from what I had wanted to capture. The minute I pulled the color out, I had that emotional response that I was wanting from it. By the time I worked the contrast, the photo was exactly what I had seen and felt at the time.
Parked right next to the truck was a mid ’80’s Corvette. Being fiberglass, there was no rust, but there were signs that the car had been there for a while. The dried-out grass clippings in the center cap of the wheels was a dead giveaway for me, and I liked the fender vents under the fuel injection badging in the trim. The car was white which wasn’t all that exciting, but I tried a couple of frames just in case I felt like I could make something work. The composition worked, and I could have very easily processed the image to look pretty decent, but the underlying consideration was that this photo didn’t make me feel anything. It just checked boxes which made me not want to process it at all. I really wanted that bar to be higher than it had been before. I had been very selective over what I had shot, and during the culling process, I had been equally as selective. I wasn’t going to include this one photo just because it was another subject that I could shoot. Maybe in different conditions, but for what I was looking at, I saw no reason to push it any further.
Also, the family was all gathered on the porch, and I had the feeling they were waiting on me. I had been there for roughly an hour and a half at this point. During that time, I had shot 52 frames and come away with eleven keepers which I was very proud of. It really did feel good to crank off so many strong photographs after so many months of struggling with photography. I was quite satisfied with the day and at the time felt that I had at least six or seven photos that were going to work out. I went over to thank everyone for putting up with me and we had another very brief conversation before bidding our goodbyes.
When I got back into the truck, I noticed that I had received a phone call earlier and a voicemail had been left. I listened to it, and it was “The Clock Shop” where I was having a mantle clock cleaned and serviced. Gary was letting me know that it was ready for pickup. Since I was out, I decided to stop by the bank to get the money and I would grab it on the way home. It wasn’t but a few miles up the road from home, so it wasn’t going to take long at all to get.
While I was on my way, I happened to think about the cars that he had in the yard. He is a bit of a car nut and has a couple of Chevelles that he regularly drives, but I had seen a blue Chevy truck and a yellow Camaro parked by his shop near the woods in the previous times that I had been there. I recalled telling him last year that they were almost ready to be in front of my camera. While the lighting was really not great at this point with the sun blaring down and no clouds to diffuse it, I did have my camera and would be there. The thought was I would see if there were any photos that I could get of them while picking up the clock. I had not gotten in close to either of the vehicles, so I wasn’t really sure exactly what was there to work with, but I felt that the yellow of the Camaro would look good with any fall foliage that might be present.
When I arrived, I picked up the clock and asked if he minded if I took some photos of the cars. He didn’t mind and even told me that there was an old Miata further in the woods. If you have been following me for any time at all, you know that I have a soft spot for the little Japanese roadster. I went back with him and found a black NB Miata sitting on the brake rotors. I was definitely interested in the car, but with it being black, I wasn’t for sure that I would be able to do anything worthwhile with it. The harsh light, and the lack of any real patina on it detracted from the visual interest in my opinion. While I did like the car, and appreciated the heritage of it, there just wasn’t a photo to be had.
It was the Camaro that really had sparked my interest, even last year. That yellow was a brilliant color and one that was perfectly matched to the season. I went in to get a closer look and found that there was a cowl induction hood propped up next to the car. Since I have a pretty hard and fast rule to shoot it as I find it, that hood was going to stay right there. The more I looked at the car, the more the hood actually made sense and added to the story. The car had Lexan windows front and rear, as well as drag slicks on the back with skinny tires up front. This was obviously a drag car at one point in its life. That hood, even though it might not be for this car, told part of that story. Had I come up and flopped the hood over, I would have lost that part of the story and might not have been able to return it back to the original position. This is why I don’t like to mess with a scene. Everything about this scene helped to tell the story that I was after.
The biggest problem that I was running into was the shrubbery that was just off the front corner. This was where I needed to shoot the photo from because this was where the light was working, and I had to try and eliminate the blue truck that was just out of frame to the right, while missing the rear frame of another car over to the left side of the frame. Getting in that close necessitated the use of my wide-angle lens which is not a great lens for automotive photography because of the perspective distortions that it introduces. However, for me to get the whole car in the frame, I was going to be at or near the 24mm wide end of my standard zoom. In order to get a bit more flexibility, I with the 16-35mm and made an effort to stay as close to the narrow end as I could. I ended up finding my happy place at 24mm which could have been done with either lens, but this one would be a bit better with it in the middle of the focal range. I was fully in the shrub to get the shot, but the perspective was right, and the colors were dancing in the frame.
It was the blue in the sky, and the bits of orange in the trees that really made this yellow work without seeming out of place. I had been worried about the shadows on the front end, but they actually weren’t as bad as I had thought they would be. After lifting the shadows just a hair, I had the right contrast for the scene while keeping the vibrant yellow at the forefront of the photo. The 4×4 posts which were used to chock the wheels turned into a leading line of sorts to point to the car without leading the eyes out of the frame. That one strip of reddish orange leaves did the same thing from the top. The other batch of reddish orange leaves gave a nice framework to the top right corner and kept the eyes in the frame from that direction. The entire photo worked much better than I had thought it would and still captured the same feeling that I had looking at the car initially.
The pickup next to the Camaro was something else that I wanted to spend time with as it had some nice sections of rust even though there weren’t many of them. The area that really caught my attention was the driver’s side fender at the C/20 badge. There was a large area of rust where the blue paint had flaked off. To me, this looked just like a map showing a continent within an ocean. I worked on finding a composition with that in mind and my thought was to swap out the lens to my standard zoom, but as I pulled the wide-angle lens off, I just overruled my own suggestion and went with the telephoto lens without any further consideration.
That choice worked very well and I was able to get the composition that I wanted, but I had to move back further than I expected to because of the focusing distance of the long lens. This wasn’t a problem as I had plenty of reach with the lens to counter the distance I needed to be. The end result was one that was framed just as I wanted it to be. The colors were kind of flat in the camera, but I felt that I could bring them all out in post easy enough. Thanks to a few masks based on color ranges, I had the image that I had been after and one that captured my imagination. There are enough clues to draw the viewer in and make them ask more questions which is exactly what I was after here. My favorite part of the photo is the negative space created by the blue paint which was kind of unexpected.
There was another few minutes dedicated to the blue truck, but I could find nothing else that really made my heart sing. I did go back to the Miata once more to see if there was anything that I had missed with it. After looking it over once again, and even looking through the telephoto lens, there was nothing that jumped out at me. I hated to leave this car there with not a single photo, but it wasn’t ready for one just yet. Maybe in another couple of years, but for now, it was in too good a condition to be in the condition that it was in….if that makes sense.
Before calling it a day, I went back to the Camaro and looked it over one last time. The only part that really caught my attention was the headlights. I know, big surprise there. I liked these for the way that the bumper cover was sculpted around them. I tried a couple of shots from the centerline of the car as well as the outside to see where the shadows made the most sense. I ended up liking the one from the outside best and worked through that composition for the final edit. The hardest part of the post processing was getting the lights to look right since they were so deeply in the shadows. I like to have a little life to my lights which meant adding a bit of exposure, but the color on the lenses made for a very muddy appearance. There were some color tweaks to both lights as I was adjusting the exposure on them to get to this point. They also helped to balance out the color palette which I liked. The image is growing on me, and it does have the right effect on me when I look at it. I was concerned that this was going to be one of those shots that just checks boxes, but I don’t think that it is.
The three shots that I made of the headlights brought my grand total to 62 frames shot for the day over the two locations. For how many compositions that I had shot, that number seemed very low, but I knew that I hadn’t shot that many frames on any of the compositions. For the most part, it was about three frames for each one and after that I felt that I had it right. When I am working on instinct that is what usually happens. This isn’t like working the landscape where I am looking at light over a large expanse and have to get so many things to line up. The light is usually pretty consistent, and I know what I’m looking for which makes it easy to wait for that one thing to happen. Once it does, I get to move on to something else. Thanks to having a very high hit rate, I ended up with a total of 14 keepers which is something like a 25% hit rate, and I am really pleased with that to say the least.
I hope that you have enjoyed this trek as much as I have as well as the photos. I really hope that each of them engages you further than just looking at them. I do want you to look into the photo and become attached to them in a way. If I have succeeded, consider purchasing a print so that you can become part of the photo on a regular basis as it hangs on your wall. There really is no better way to enjoy a photograph than in its physical form without all the variables introduced by the endless variety of screens that you might be viewing these photos on. What I have found over the years is that computer monitors are usually set way too bright and are too blue. What that means is when you are looking at the photos on your device, there is every chance that the highlights are getting blown out, and all the colors are skewed too much to the blue. The only way to avoid that is to have a monitor that is calibrated the same as mine, or to have a print which is done from a fully calibrated workflow so that the end result is just what I had envisioned when I worked through the processing.
Remember that I do offer various types of mentorships for many aspects of photography. If you are getting started, or just want to jumpstart your journey to get past a particular hurdle, let’s talk about it. All my consultations are free, and I will help you select the best mentorship option for what you are trying to accomplish. I night even determine that I can’t help you due to my own limitations, but I can usually steer you in the right direction to get the information that you would need. I might be able to get you over that preverbal hump during the course of the conversation which I have done several times over the years with potential clients. I’m not here to take your money, I’m here to help you in any way that I can. Give me a call and let’s see if I can help you.
It is also worth mentioning that as the weather gets chilly and the trees get bare, I have a full indoor studio that can be used for all your portrait needs. Whether it is a headshot, styled portrait, family session, or a couple’s session, I’ve got you covered. In fact, if you are wanting to do something geared more towards boudoir, I also have sets designed for that as well. As with most other things, the consultations are free, and I would love to discuss what type of photographs you are after. Give me a call and let’s get this in the books!
Until next time…
